THE BRAHMA SUTRAS AS A MOKSHA SHASTRA SWAMI KRISHNANANDA The Divine Life Society Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India Website: www.swami-krishnananda.org ABOUT THIS EDITION Though this eBook edition is designed primarily for digital readers and computers, it works well for print too. Page size dimensions are 5.5" x 8.5", or half a regular size sheet, and can be printed for personal, non- commercial use: two pages to one side of a sheet by adjusting your printer settings. 2 CONTENTS Publisher's Note ............................................................................. 4 Preface ............................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1: The Differing Views of Sankaracharya and Ramanuja on Brahman ......................................... 8 Chapter 2: Retracing Our Steps.............................................. 20 Chapter 3: The Sojourn of the Soul after Departing from the Body ......................................... 34 Chapter 4: Types of Liberation .............................................. 48 Chapter 5: Knowing Things as They Are ............................ 63 3 PUBLISHER'S NOTE This is a series of discourses on the essence of the Brahma Sutras given to the students of the Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy of The Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India during March of 1997. In this series Swamiji focuses primarily on the fourth and most important chapter, called Phala Adhyaya, The Fruit of Knowledge, which deals with the attainment of liberation. PREFACE The structure and development of this academy has a long history, as envisaged by its founder, Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, for the spiritual development of the human individual. Spirituality in the true sense of the term implies an all-round consideration of the faculties of the human individual so that we become healthy in the total structure of our being, healthy in every aspect of what we really are. There is nothing with which we are not connected in this world. The physical body is the nearest object of consideration no doubt, but we are not merely the physical body. We are also a mind, we are emotion, and we are intellect and reason. We belong to human society, we are citizens of a country, and we are units of an international setup. We belong to the whole world, whose breath we breathe, whose life in the form of the sun in the sky we enjoy, whose waters we drink, whose diet we take into ourselves. If you deeply consider your involvement in life, you will find that you are much more than what you appear to be to your own self. You have a wider comprehensiveness of being than your physical individuality. Every one of you has been introduced as so-and-so, from such and such a place, such and such a qualification, with such and such an occupation, but this is not the whole truth of yourself. You are a citizen of this nation, which is a very important factor to be considered. That aspect is the duty involved therein. You have a duty towards anything to which you belong. To what is it that you do not belong? Anything that contributes to your very existence in this world is that to which you belong, and towards that you have a debt 5 to pay, as you have to pay a tax for the protection you receive from that administration. It was realised by our great founder Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj that people are generally very ignorant of themselves. They may be great masters in the arts and the sciences, they may know the structure of the stars and the inbuilt operation of the sun, they may be highly professional experts in geology, geography, history, and mathematics, but they may not know anything about themselves—as the lamp gives light to everybody, but the bottom of the lamp is dark. That should not be the predicament of any person. You may be educated and you are able to give light to other people in the arts and the sciences, but at the back there should not be a dark, ignorant base. The discipline that is necessary for any person is all- round in the sense that it has to contribute to happiness in your life. The dissatisfaction that gnaws into the vitals of people in any manner whatsoever has to be taken care of properly, as we do in medical administration. You must be happy internally, emotionally, politically, and also financially. In every way you have to be happy. There should not be pricking or pinching of part of your personality from any side. This requires tremendous adjustment of your constitutional alignment. The whole personality has to be aligned to the structure to which it is actually related. As you are all very highly educated people, you may be accustomed to think in a rational and intellectual manner, and the rationality spoken of should also be a comprehensive approach of your being. In the East, the emphasis has always been on spiritual experience and a universal approach to all things. In the West, the emphasis has been logical, mathematical, empirical, outwardly motivated, and principally social, as 6 differentiated from the Eastern inwardising process of the integration of life. Now it is necessary to combine both these aspects. As you are part and parcel of the world of experience outside, the exteriorising tendency of the mind and the reason also has to be given proper training and made part and parcel of the process of the final inwardising process which is the spiritual approach to life. The inner and the outer are not contrasted. That idea should be given up. What you think inside should not be in opposition to what you see outside; then there is a gulf between the outer experience and the inner experience. You may be grieved outwardly or grieved inwardly. This is not the proper way of envisaging things. The logical approach, which is the emphasis laid in the West, and the inwardised mystical and spiritual approach which is emphasised in the East, have to be brought together. 7 Chapter 1 THE DIFFERING VIEWS OF SANKARACHARYA AND RAMANUJA ON BRAHMAN The tripod of Indian thought and culture is constituted of three great venerable scriptures known as the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavadgita. The Upanishads are the hidden mystical import of the Veda Samhitas such as the Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharaveda. Each Veda has four sections dealing with different topics. The primary and the most important part of each Veda is the Samhita, which is the mantra recited with intonation, as is chanted in temples and during worship of any kind. Even in our own temple these mantras—Rudra Sukta, Purusha Sukta, Narayana Sukta, etc.—are chanted during abhisheka to Lord Siva. These are outwardly and apparently hymns or prayers offered to the gods in the high heaven, which I do not wish to discuss now because my subject is something different. The mystical meaning of these hymns or prayers is so deep that it passes human understanding. Therefore, these hidden meanings are transcendent in their nature, transcendent because they touch the core of being, beyond sense perception and intellectual comprehension. The seers and sages of the Upanishads, the great masters of yore, plumbed the depths of Reality and recognised a common substance permeating all things, going beyond the usual distinction that we make between the seer and the seen object. They are transcendent because of the fact that their perception is totally different from ordinary human perception. We have a stereotyped way of assessing values in the world. I see something, and I judge that thing in the 8 light of how I see that particular thing. Seeing is believing. But the truth of the universe does not seem to be confined to this apparent bifurcation compelled upon human perception due to the individuality of each being segregated from the world outside. I am inside and the world is outside. Above this distinction commonly made in the human vision of things there is a supernormal vision which reveals before us a reality which will astound us and raise our spirits to a height that is unimaginable to our ordinary thinking process. Such a procedure was adopted in the Upanishads. These days, many people study the Upanishads. The schools teaching the Upanishads generally follow a tradition of trying to learn the meaning of the Upanishads grammatically, linguistically—purely from the point of view of their lexical and etymological meaning. The spirit of a thing is not the same as what we can comprehend about it through any linguistic or literary process. The Upanishads are not easy to understand. Though we may read them several times and imagine that we have grasped them with our learning and educational capacity, yet they cannot be easily understood. It is because of the difficulty of going into the depths of the Upanishads that great masters or acharyas such as Sankara, Ramanuja, and Madhava differed from one another. That these great heroes of learning and theological wisdom did not agree with one another is evidence enough to show the difficulty involved in understanding the true meaning of the statements of the Upanishads. Great tapas and austerity are called for on the part of any student who embarks upon this adventure of studying and understanding the import of the Upanishads. The Upanishads are the result of intense austerity of the soul, the spirit, of those great masters 9 who detached themselves from every kind of external contact and confined themselves to a face-to-face encounter with the Reality of the universe. Who on earth can think in this way? Which person in the world is capable of encountering the whole universe directly, face to face, without being conditioned by the apparatus of sensory perception and logical understanding? To obviate this difficulty which students generally feel in their classrooms of Upanishadic studies, the great sage Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa classified the Vedas.